So much for all the "expert advice" she got before and during her journey.
This is so unbelievably naive on the part of her organizers. Poor kid must be devastated.
www.sail-world.com/USA
I would have just stopped at the first tropical island I saw and drank coconuts and eaten pigs with the locals until my money ran out or I died of obesity.
woman navigators!
No seriously, this is so sad - the poor lass. She's got more cahunas than most of us and now this news in the final straight.
That sucks..... maybe once she gets around Tazi she can head straight up the coast and do a lap of Guam....!
Somehow i think the media will overlook this small (HUGE) stuff up.
A bit hard to believe they go that wrong
Surely there have been some very knowledgeable people behind the scenes making the decisions who know the rules.
Perhaps there is more than one way to sail around the world and still claim a record?
Maybe the don't wont a record, maybe she just wants to be able to say she sailed around the world (it's close enough for me)
Will be interesting to see if the main stream media pick that up and run with it.
Would put a huge downer on the the whole effort.
Or they may prefer to promote the heroric effort of a young girl as it is likely to sell better than trash in this instance.
Don't worry about the media picking up on it, if it sounds sensational, they'll go to print for sure.
Re her intentions, it was always about the record books. She was inspired by Cottee and Martin as she says in the article.
But she really had a double point to prove after her little sleep at the wheel accident with that Korean bulk carrier, whereby she was labelled immature and incompetent, by the very same media.
The weirdest part of the whole saga is her trip wasn't registered with ISAF/WSSRC. If so they would have told her to go to an antipodean point.
That's like Australia winning the world cup soccer only to be disqualified for the coach not registering the team.
I wonder how many people from the WSSRC have completed a solo circumnavigation.
Hat's off to her, she still is the youngest to complete a solo navigation around the world - just not on the WSSRC racetrack.
If she really wants "THAT" record she could head out half way to NZ and then
turn back to Siggley. I think she may well be satisfied with what she has done,
probably would enjoy a Macca's or two by now though! 
I agree chopper...hats off to her. She's got some guts.
Unfortunately she has officiallly gone for a burn around the southern ocean and that's why her name will not appear in the books. The half way to NZ won't fix it. She has to sail to an antipodean point and back, the nearest one would now be somewhere around Guam ..months more at sea....big call.
How I read it was that for the WSSCR record she doesn't have to go through two antipodean points, but she just has to do extra distance going round more points(capes or islands), and not having the extra distance purely by tacking and her logged miles. So a voyage out to NZ and back would do.
??
True champions don't care about "the record." It's the personal journey that really matters, isn't it?
NR...the way her track looks on her website, she hasn't gone around 1 antipodean yet, that's the beef with WSSRC. When she did the u-turn just north of the equator, she had to be sure that if she had stopped right there and shot a line thru the centre of the earth, thru to the other side, it would hit where she had been or was going to go, in a north -south sense. Because she did the u-turn just north of EQ, the line would have popped out just south of EQ.(not 40 to 60 odd south where she sailed).
In the eyes of the officials, this is "cutting the corner" big time and is veiwed pretty badly as such. She shaved weeks off her race time by not going up well north of Hawaiin lattitudes, doing the u-turn and back to the Horn. Each degree of lattitude = 60nm or 10 hours at full speed. EQ to 40 north and back to EQ =80 degrees= 800 hours at 6kts full speed.
BTW it was a race against Jesse Martin, to be the youngest around the full track.
I feel so sorry for her to get pipped by her own planners.
I thought not going round the antipodean wasn't the big issue, it was more that she hasn't clocked up the miles going round actual points. They were using logged miles, and the problem is more the record uses miles calculated. Jessi Martin did go round 2 antipodean points, but that wasn't absolutely necesary purely for WSSRC records.
and she started so well.. 
www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/jessica-watson-to-press-on-with-world-trip-despite-crash-20090909-fg8w.html
